


don't know the hour that finds me

by philthestone



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post Season 2, also there is 1 moment of background hanleia bc u all know me, area father receives several hugs in span of one month
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:28:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28273869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: He’s more alert than he’s felt for the last several weeks as they make their way up the path to a small apartment in Yavin IV’s residential sector in mutual silence. Beyond the jungle line, the top of an ancient temple looms. It’s not really ominous, though. Something about this place seems lighter, and not just for the warm air and the lushness of the natural ambiance.Din is the one who knocks on the apartment door; Ahsoka seems to have forgotten how.“You okay?” he asks.“Fine,” Ahsoka says, in a pitched voice.He’s no Jedi -- obviously -- but she seems a little freaked out. Din doesn’t pry. He’s kind of trying to just go with it. He is, as established, very much out of his depth on -- all of this.Maybe she’s meditating.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Ahsoka Tano, Din Djarin & Cara Dune, Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda, Din Djarin & Luke Skywalker, Din Djarin & Omera, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 65
Kudos: 585





	don't know the hour that finds me

**Author's Note:**

> i havent written star wars in months and ive never written el mando and also this style is a bit different from my usual, so apologies if characterizations are not perfect. also, this is ... not meant to be serious. im sure the show will present something wonderful and more plot-relevant in season three. 
> 
> that said. i lov these guys. and this was a lot of fun
> 
> title is from "i'm on my way" by rhiannon giddens and reviews are love

I.

Cara Dune is intimidating on a good day. 

Today is not a good day, objectively speaking. But somehow Din finds he does not have the energy to be intimidated. 

“You just let him go with someone you’ve never _met_ before?”

Cara knows Luke Skywalker, of course -- not personally or anything -- but by name and face. The Rebel Alliance wasn’t all that big, and Din figures a Jedi must have been high profile. Or something. He’s not too sure about these things. She still has some choice words on the matter, though. Abruptly, he wishes Kuill were still here; he is sure, deep inside of him, that he would know how to be right now. What to say -- how to explain himself.

“Grogu trusted him,” Din says.

“You didn’t even know the guy’s name, Din!”

“You knew his name.”

“ _Dank ferrick_ \-- you know that’s not my point.”

He exhales thinly. Fett hasn’t returned for pick-up yet and they’re standing off to an awkward corner of the Imperial cruiser’s nav deck and trying to pretend Bo-Katan isn’t there. _Kriff. That too_ , Din thinks. Gideon is blessedly knocked out on the floor. Fennec is standing over him with a blaster and carefully avoiding Din’s eye, which he supposes he appreciates. He still hasn’t put his helmet back on. That means he can see the strained vein in Cara’s forehead in full colour holograde quality; no heat radar distortions. 

He wonders why this matters, as she didn’t know _his_ name -- and he has noticed the deliberate use of it, too -- until just recently. Cara isn’t avoiding his eye. But she isn’t making a big deal of his face, either. 

“You know his name,” he repeats. “It’s fine.”

“I can’t believe this. After everything -- you just handed the kid off?”

“ _Carasynthia_ ,” he grits out. That shuts her up. 

He takes another breath. Should he put the helmet back on? How does this work, now? 

“It was his _choice_ ,” he insists. He knows, objectively, that there is something pleading and desperate in his tone, the sort that you can’t really wrap up and hide away even with your face covered. Again, he finds he is too exhausted to do much about it. Cara watches him silently for a long moment, her mouth slightly open, like she heard the tone.

She’s not stupid, obviously -- Din knows. 

He watches as her face does something complicated and her fists clench spasmodically at her sides. He doesn’t have much time to process her movements before suddenly she steps forward and Din is having the air crushed out of him. He thinks he hears a couple of his joints creak out of place under the armor, and they’re close enough that the smell of exertion and fear-sweat is significant. But she’s warm. It creeps in past the scarf around his neck. He doesn’t move his arms, or do anything but blink stupidly for a couple moments.

It is not -- a terrible experience.

He’s released, and the heels of his boots slip back down against the durasteel floor. 

“Um,” Din says.

Cara punches him on the arm, hard. 

“Come on,” she says. “Fett should be here soon.”

She looks away as he puts the helmet back on. He can still feel the spots on his face where the tears have dried.

 _His choice_ , he thinks again to himself. That’s all that matters. 

II.

Sorgun is about the same as it was the last time, only with fewer Imperial Walkers. Which is -- good, Din thinks. Obviously. That’s good.

Fett offered him a temporary job on the awkward ride away from the Cruiser; he _could_ have gone back to Nevarro and gotten in touch with Greef; he’s definitely still avoiding Bo-Katan.

But he came to Sorgun. 

It’s green and blue and yellow and lush, like it was the first time. Din’s logic, that he tells himself, is that maybe a few days of manual labour on their krill farms will help straighten out his head. It feels strange to be here -- _alone_ \-- even though the villagers seem happy to have him back. Winta’s head comes up nearly to his shoulder now; she’s got the slowly-sharpening angles of a kid growing up fast. But she’s still as sweet as before. And her mother --

Omera takes one look at him and offers her guest room without question. 

He’s _still_ not quite capable of wrapping his head around her kindness. She waits to ask him, as he expected she would, until the end of the third day.

“Not -- taken, no.”

“No,” she repeats quietly. But the relief in her voice is evident -- and along with it, a gentle question mark.

“He was -- a special kid,” Din says. The pleading tone has come back. He feels kind of like his head is still ringing from where that Darktrooper tried to put him through durasteel wall skull-first. “He needed to be with his own kind. It was his choice, Omera.”

He keeps repeating it. And it _is_ true. On that, he knows he isn’t kidding himself.

“But you can still see him again?”

“I -- yes,” Din says. “I mean. I -- don’t know.”

Can he? He’d assumed he could. He’d promised the kid, after all. But he has no idea where he _is_ right now. Is he allowed to find out? Ahsoka had said their attachment could be dangerous -- for Grogu, specifically. What if he has to wait until a certain time before he can go? Where _does_ he go? He didn’t think to ask, and nobody told him, and now he feels a little bit stupid.

“I don’t actually know where he is,” Din explains. He doesn’t know how to communicate the rest. That maybe he’ll -- kriff everything up, or something, if he tries to track his kid down.

The lighting in her small hut is dappled and willow-brown. It makes the inky colour of her long hair softer, and the blush of her red tunic and high cheekbones brighter. They can hear the sound of kids playing outside, and maybe this is what makes him inhale, sort of wobbly. He can’t tell if Omera hears it, through the mask. But he can’t figure out how to keep talking, and she notices that, he thinks. She stays quiet but reaches out with one calloused hand to take his gloved one into her lap. Very gently, she unclasps the armour securing the glove, and pulls it off. 

Her palm is so warm against his. Din doesn’t really know what to do.

“Din Djarin,” he blurts.

Her eyebrows flicker with confusion. “What?”

“My name.”

“Oh,” she says, softly. His hand is still held in hers. 

She reaches up just like she did before, very slowly, and this time, he lets her do it.

Her objective does not seem to be to _look_ at his face, though. She sets the helmet down quietly on the rough-hewn kitchen table, then leans forward in one smooth, oft-practiced movement. Again, Din does not have time to process the course of action before she is wrapping her arms carefully around him, pressing one capable hand against the back of his scalp, over his hair. The angle she’s holding him at means that his uncovered face presses into the crook of her neck. He feels all of the air whoosh out of him in one go. 

He wonders why everyone is so intent on hugging him recently. But then -- he can admit that he came to Sorgun for a reason.

Not -- _this_ , specifically. But maybe _this_ adjacent. He had a vague, abstract idea that Omera would understand something he himself is having a hard time articulating. 

“You can stay as long as you need, Din,” she says, in her kind voice.

“Just a few days,” he manages.

“Okay.”

He’s not trembling, but he kind of feels like he wants to be. He takes his ungloved hand and slowly brings it up to rest against her shoulder blades, and they sit like that for a time, just breathing, in her dappled kitchen.

III.

He runs into Ahsoka in a docking bay on Sullust about a month later. 

It’s not planned or anything, which means that the knowing glint in her eye is immediately off-putting. But then, Din can admit to himself that outside of the grounded knowledge that she would never hurt Grogu, and is therefore a friend, most things about Ahsoka are a little off-putting -- if only because he has no context by which to understand them.

“Hey, Mandalorian,” she says, in a tone that makes it sound like she wants to call him something else. Her voice is warm. Din grimaces beneath the helmet.

“Ahsoka,” he offers.

She is wearing a cloak that falls down to cover her sabers, and has a small pack slung over her shoulder. He’s not sure which of the ships in the bay is hers, or if she hitched a ride with someone else. That’s what he did; he still hasn’t replaced the _Crest_. She tilts her head, regarding him.

“You look like you need a hug,” she says.

Seriously? Her too?

“But I feel like you won’t appreciate one from me,” she continues, a quiet humour under her serene tone. “Grogu found another Jedi.”

He does appreciate that she says it like that -- that she acknowledges the kid’s choice.

“Yes,” he says.

“There aren’t many left,” she repeats, the same way she did the first time. “How’s the little guy doing, then?”

“I haven’t seen him,” Din says, before he realizes the implications of what she’s said. “Wait -- you thought I’d have seen him?”

She looks confused. “You haven’t? Were you told to stay away?”

“No,” Din says, a little stupidly.

He’s been feeling that a lot lately. That -- and many other things. But Ahsoka Tano is not the person he wants to have a heart to heart with, right now. 

He can’t tell what she’s thinking -- she’s frustratingly unreadable, even bare-faced as she is -- but one of her montrals twitches. Sullust’s docking bay bustles around them. Vaguely, he knows he’s here to find a job; he’s just finished his last one for Greef, which was simple but went poorly anyway. Greef gave him one of his imperious but well-meaning _hmms_ and told him he should take some time off. But he needs something that can get him enough credits to find his own ship. Which is -- not something he particularly wants to do. 

Necessary, all the same.

“You know,” Ahsoka says, after what feels like an eternity of being understood in all sorts of ways he doesn’t care to dwell on, “I think I know where he is, and I’ve got an errand to run there anyway. Wanna come with?”

“An errand,” Din repeats. Again, a little stupidly. Except -- Ahsoka suddenly looks, for the very first time, a shade uncomfortable. If nothing else, it makes him feel slightly more in control. 

Her face clears. The montral twitches, a second time.

“Uh -- family thing. But Grogu’ll be there.”

She hasn’t asked him for an explanation, yet. Oddly, that’s a comfort, where it hasn’t really been before.

“Okay,” Din says. Ahsoka nods, and reaches out to pat his arm. It’s not really awkward. In fact, it almost makes him smile, in an exhausted, relieved kind of way.

He follows her to her ship, armour carefully strapped in place.

IV.

Neither of them really talk during the trip there -- she doesn’t elaborate on her errand and he doesn’t explain why he hasn’t made an effort to find Grogu -- but it’s not a truly uncomfortable silence. Her ship is small and compact, nothing at all like the _Crest_. But it’s practical, and comfortable enough that he could theoretically get some rest. She tells him to get on that while they’re still in hyperspace. It doesn’t really work out, and Ahsoka definitely knows, in spite of his helmet and the mutual silence. 

He’s still more alert than he’s felt for the last several weeks as they make their way up the path to a small apartment in Yavin IV’s residential sector. Beyond the jungle line, the top of an ancient temple looms. It’s not really ominous, though. Something about this place seems lighter, and not just for the warm air and the lushness of the natural ambiance.

Din is the one who knocks on the apartment door; Ahsoka seems to have forgotten how. 

“You okay?” he asks.

“Fine,” Ahsoka says, in a pitched voice.

He’s no Jedi -- obviously -- but she seems a little freaked out. Din doesn’t pry. He’s kind of trying to just go with it. He is, as established, very much out of his depth on -- all of this. 

Maybe she’s meditating.

The apartment door swishes open and Din finds himself looking down at a young woman. She has wry eyebrows and a lot of dark chestnut hair braided around her head, and she’s wearing a sensible off-white tunic, but no boots, like people do when they’re at ease in a place. There’s a holster strapped around her thigh, but it’s empty. She’s mid-sentence on a comm call with a New Republic-issue pager tucked between her shoulder and her ear.

“-- mean you can’t land? You’ve landed here before. _Obviously_ , it has not changed that much, Han. No -- just, the navreader. I told you it was giving me problems. _No_ , that is not because your ship doesn’t like me. She’s not sentient. Hang on, I’ll call you back. Uh huh. Uh huh. Love you too.”

She turns the pager off, looking harried. But in that way people have where they don’t really seem to mind it. Din has just recently come to understand this look. 

“Can I help you?” she asks. 

She hasn’t seemed to miss a beat; Din, maybe subconsciously, has grown to expect surprise when people see him in full armour. And of course, Ahsoka is here -- a Jedi, and everything. She’s pulled her cloak back so her sabers are on full display. He turns to look at her, so maybe she’ll take the lead -- is this young woman a Jedi, too? -- but she seems to have gone mute. She’s staring at the girl with wide eyes and an unreadable expression on her face.

Not unreadable in the Jedi way. In like, the normal being way. Din would wonder what that’s about, but it’s not really any of his business, so he turns back to the girl.

“Um,” he starts. 

But she’s already raising an eyebrow in the direction of Ahsoka’s sabers. “You’re here for my brother,” she guesses, with the hint of a grin around her mouth. She seems pleased. 

“Yes,” Din says. Then he says, “I mean -- we’re not here for the same thing. I don’t actually know why she’s here.”

Out of the corner of Din’s eye, he thinks he sees Ahsoka mouth the word _brother_.

”... Uh huh,” says the woman. Her big eyes have narrowed in a way that makes Din feel like he should watch his step. Impressive she can manage it, given how small she is. 

“Luke Skywalker,” he continues, feeling the need to explain. Only, once he starts, he finds he can’t really stop. “I -- my kid. Grogu. He went with him, last month. He’s small and has big ears and likes to play with round objects and eats frog people eggs. If you’re not careful he can wander off and get into trouble so you have to keep an eye out on him all the time. You can’t give him blue milk or he’ll throw up and he sleeps best with someone there to hold his finger. I think he has really strong Jedi powers but I don’t know a lot about that stuff, so he -- he made the choice to go and I let him. I just wanted to make sure he’s okay because I --” 

Din’s voice cracks, just a bit. 

“I promised him we’d see each other again.”

The young woman stares at him.

Then she says, 

“ _You’re_ the guy Luke’s been looking for!”

“What,” Din says.

She’s grinning fully now, which is making all of this a lot more confusing than it needs to be. For a split second, he thinks a bit hysterically that _she_ might step forward and try to hug him, too. Weirder things have happened, lately -- for all that she’s looking at them so _warmly_ all of a sudden.

“Oh, I _told_ that nerf brain he was an idiot for not asking your contact information,” she’s saying. “He’s been beating himself up over it the whole month! _I thought the kid would know how to reach him, Leia_. Yeah, right, Skywalker.” She rolls her eyes, and steps away from the door as though to usher them inside. “Well, you’re here now. Come on in. I’ll let him know.”

He and Ahsoka shuffle into the apartment’s hallway, awkwardly. It seems pretty nondescript. There are boots strewn by the entrance mat and the inside smells of warm spices, almost like you’d find in a Tatooine market place. It’s strange, but not in a bad way. Kind of reassuring.

He thought Jedi might live in caves or something; he found Ahsoka in the middle of a devastated forest, after all. But this planet -- apartment? Residential area? -- is something else entirely. The lightness, he thinks again, and feels his shoulders relax by a marginal inch. 

“This is a nice place,” Ahsoka says, speaking for the first time and almost startling Din. Her voice is a soft, tender thing. It doesn’t match her tense posture at all.

“Uh huh,” the woman -- Leia -- says. “A lot quieter than Coruscant, anyway.”

If there are unspoken things to be unpacked within the exchange, Din doesn’t notice; from the other end of the apartment, there is the sound of a door sliding shut, and tiny footsteps. 

Without thinking about it, he reaches up to take the helmet off, his smile already blooming.

“I really am sorry I didn’t explain more,” Luke Skywalker says, about two hours later.

He’s come out of the living room and into the kitchen, where Din is sitting with Grogu in his arms. The kitchen smells of the Rim-world hot chocolate packets that were opened earlier and the damp, earthy humidity of Yavin IV; the back door has been left open. Din can see a vague outline of the Jedi temple from beyond the window. There’s a school there, apparently. It’s going really well. Grogu is around kids his own age. He takes a deep breath, and looks up. 

Somehow, Luke Skywalker is a lot less mysterious when he is standing in sock-clad feet by his own off-brand caf maker, offering an exceptionally sheepish grin. 

“That’s alright,” Din says, because mostly he does not know what else to do. Grogu is fascinated by a new belt buckle slung around his shoulder pad, and has been absorbed by that for the past fifteen minutes. He keeps making cooing noises and sticking the thing in his mouth. “C’mon kid,” he mutters. “You don’t know where that’s been.” But it’s a futile exercise.

“No,” Luke sighs. “It’s not. But you’re here now.”

Din nods. 

“The old Jedi -- they didn’t hold much with close bonds between people.” There’s a soft expression on the guy’s face as he watches Grogu chew on the buckle. He leans against his kitchen counter and fiddles with the strap of the glove on his hand, looking like he’s thought a lot about what he says next. “I think they were wrong, though.”

Din swallows. 

“I don’t really -- know how this works,” he admits, feeling exceptionally foolish. Is it obvious? There have been a lot of things, recently, that he didn’t know much about -- he’s _still_ avoiding Bo-Katan, for example -- and he wonders how much that’s affected the opinion this guy’s formed of him -- this blue-eyed young man Din so readily entrusted with the care of his son.

But Luke only says, half-laughing,

“Well, if you ask my sister, neither do I.” 

There’s a beat. Luke’s eyes widen, belatedly registering Din’s alarm. 

“I mean -- I do! About Jedi stuff. I promise Grogu’s safe. I just -- oh, Force. It was a joke.”

He peters off a bit lamely. It’s weird, Din thinks, existing without the helmet on. People can tell the instant you start freaking out. Or maybe he’s just bad at hiding it, because he’s never had to do it before. 

Grogu burbles happily from around the drool-covered buckle.

Not that Luke Skywalker hasn’t already seen his face. In fact, he thinks that he’d have probably had the same reaction with the helmet on, too. A part of him, sudden and traitorous, wonders if he is even allowed to claim the care of Grogu at all, now, having broken with the Creed.

But he doesn’t tell Luke Skywalker any of this. He says,

“I’m just glad he’s doing okay.” 

“He’s a sweet kid,” Luke says, with another of those sunny grins. “Very talented. But he missed you. Been keepin’ on my tail like a sand fly on a Bantha’s backside for three weeks now to find you.” 

The expression sounds so much like something Cobb Vanth would say that Din almost laughs out loud. Instead, he shakes himself a bit, and says, “Thank you.” 

He’s not sure exactly what he’s covering with this particular communication of gratitude. But he means it, all the same.

Luke glances back into the living room, where he’d emerged from. Ahsoka and Leia are still in there. Din had heard some raised voices, earlier, maybe -- he wasn’t much paying attention -- but it’s all quiet now. A shadow of something crosses the young man’s gentle face. They watch as Grogu coos and brings one clawed little hand to pat at Din’s scruffy cheek; he has lost interest in the buckle, it seems, and is now grinning up at him. All of his pointy little teeth are on display. 

“Hey, kid,” Din says.

Abruptly, he reaches up in awkward toddler movements, and presses the top of his head against Din’s chin, each hand clutching carefully at the scarf around his neck. The little guy is warm, like everyone else who has hugged him recently. But this time, Din sits there wonderingly as every particle of his body seems to melt, into a peaceful, gentle sense of relief.

“Of course,” he hears the Jedi say softly, finally, from his place by the kitchen counter. “I’d hate to be separated from my Dad for too long, too.”

“Yeah,” Din says, and allows himself to relax into the hug.

**Author's Note:**

> this is def not meant to fit perfectly in canon. in fact im actively pretending the sequels dont exist. but i think its soft and isnt that all that matters


End file.
